On the last full day of his last campaign, all the asking and arguing is done, and now he's just exhausted. An aide will come in soon and press him to please go back to his room at the Vdara and just rest. He says he will, he will, as soon as he's finished here. He has some idea that maybe he'll catch game five of the Series down in Texas. He's pretty rabid for baseball, grew up a big Indians fan, and the Cardinals, too — glued to the radio down in Searchlight, Nevada, his only portal to the outside world — but he'll root for just about anybody as long as it's not the Yankees. He hates the damn Yankees. Rooting for them is like rooting for the fat cats to beat the little guys, which makes no sense whatsoever, if you ask him. So yeah, baseball, maybe later, back at the Vdara.

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But Harry Reid's not going anywhere just yet, and here he sits parked on the phone in his headquarters, a warren of plain rooms in a featureless Vegas neighborhood of office parks showing FOR LEASE signs most every block. He yawns. He's impeccably dressed — high collar, perfect knot, charcoal-gray suit with a chalk stripe. Yawns again. Behind his glasses, his eyes, which he never seems to fully open, look like sanded marbles. Light-purple bags underneath. When he was a kid in high school, he had to work for his living, and he'd keep going on such little sleep that on the night shift at the bakery, he taught himself to sleep standing up. On the campaign he hasn't been sleeping much at all, and he says with a dry laugh that he hasn't been dealing with the stress of this campaign "as well as you might think." Back in 1998, when he ran a terribly dysfunctional campaign and pulled out his reelection over John Ensign by just 428 votes after a month of lawsuits and missing ballots and psychic torture, Reid took up yoga. He says it's not so hard to do, you just have to sweat a lot in a hot room. But lately he hasn't had time for yoga or much else. And he's in another race that's just a killer, and what's worse, his opponent this time is crazy. The only real difference between '98 and now is that no one expected him to lose in '98, and no one expects him to win now. No one.

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But it is disregard like this that has always propelled him. Back when he was in law school at George Washington and working full-time as a Capitol Hill cop, and Landra was pregnant with their second and his car died and the schedule was killing him, Reid went to one of the deans of the law school — fellow named Potts — to plead his case and ask for some financial assistance. And Potts came back at him with "Mr. Reid, maybe the law is not for you. Why don't you just quit?" Instead, Reid doubled his course load, finished law school early, and vowed to leave that miserable town and never go back. So he's got more than a little chip on his shoulder.

Now everybody says that he is about to be swallowed by history, served up like a sacrifice. Many in the press say he ought to just capitulate to the power of this narrative and are actually impatient with Reid's noncooperation in the face of a tidal wave. Guy doesn't seem to understand. Could be because the paper in Vegas seems to hate him so much; it's enough to make one jaundiced by media narratives. "For the past eighteen months, they wrote two editorials a week against me," Reid says. "One Sunday, they ran five pieces of negative stuff plus a cartoon against me. As a journalist, that would have made Mike terribly upset."

Mike is Mike O'Callaghan, a one-legged Korean War hero who showed up in Henderson to teach at Basic High when Harry was a senior, and the meeting turned the boy's world on its ear. O'Callaghan became Reid's history teacher, and boxing coach, and stand-in father — all that and a newspaper publisher and the most popular governor in Nevada history, too. All those years ago, O'Callaghan just saw something worth saving in Reid, who, when he was only thirty, was elected O'Callaghan's lieutenant governor.

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Courtesy of Harry Reid

Reid (second from left) with his brother Don, his mother, his uncle Spud, and his brothers Larry and Dale on the day they buried his father, June 1972.

Back then, Reid had the look of a guy with something to prove, a handsome and hungry look. Kind of a tough guy, or an actor who would have been cast in that kind of role in seventies movies. There's a picture that was taken in June 1972, on the afternoon he and his three brothers buried his father — another Harry Reid — who had killed himself a few days before. Reid had been in his office off Las Vegas Boulevard in the early afternoon when his mother called. "Pop shot himself" was all she said. Reid flew down the highway to Searchlight to find his father still lying there on a mattress of blood, gun by his side. He dealt with the coroner and did what he could to console his shattered mother. Reid doesn't speak euphemistically, and he loved and admired his father, but he was a drunk. A drunk who beat Reid's mother, Inez. That is, until Reid got to be fourteen and big enough to take him down, with the help of his little brother, Larry. In this picture, Reid is thirty-two. He is flanked by his brothers and mother and an uncle. They all wear smiles that seem to be born of resignation and relief. But in Reid's face is something else — defiance.

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His looks have been reshaped by time, but almost forty years later, he is no less defiant. Look at him a little more closely. He's grayer than he was a year ago — the hair above his ears is snow-white now, that's new — maybe a little more stooped, and at the moment he's showing every hard second of his seventy years. He worked in the mines as a child, in the dark with his silent father, scratching at the earth well after all the gold was gone. And after that he was a determined if not particularly skilled boxer. No knockout puncher, his best punch was a left jab, and he knew how to work the body, and so he won more than he should have. Once he was sparring with a pro, well out of his weight class, and he remembers that the next day his forehead was sore from the beating he took.

Pete Souza/White House

That's what he looks like now. "Who's next to call?" Reid asks the young man with the list seated across the folding table from him. He has dozens of people to call this afternoon. Reid has decided to spend the last evening of his last campaign thanking the people who have canceled a year of their lives for him, in what out in the world now looks to be a doomed effort. Fifty-three field organizers scattered all over Nevada. Fifty-three calls to make. It is one thing to acquit yourself well when things are good, and quite another when you face humiliating defeat. That the most powerful man in the United States Senate has chosen to spend the waning hours this way is not lost on the few people who are with him in the room.

"Senator, this young man's name is Manny Lopez Del Rio. He went to Cal Berkeley, very funny kid," says Preston Elliott, who runs the coordinated field organization for the Nevada Democrats. Another aide dials. "Hi, Manny, I have Senator Reid on the phone for you."

"Manny, how are you? Harry Reid here. How was Cal Berkeley?" he says. "I've got a granddaughter going to school there, a freshman. Yep. Yep." Reid listens intently for half a minute. "I simply didn't want to let the day go by without telling you how much I appreciate, Manny, what you've done. Because of you and the other organizers, we have a nice lead coming out of the early vote" — Nevada permits voting twelve days before Election Day — "and if we have a decent day tomorrow, we'll win this thing. We're only thirty hours away. Do you have thirty more hours in you? Thank you so much, Manny. I'll never forget it."

"Is that right?" says Reid, turning around in his chair to give Summers a glance. He looks as though he can't quite believe it's almost over. "Okay, who's next?"

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"Leora is our regional for the Henderson office. She's having a good day today. Her last check-in had fifty-two volunteers who are out walking."

"Hi, Leora, I have Senator Reid on the phone for you."

"Leora? Preston tells me you have fifty-two volunteers. Isn't that wonderful? ... What percent of your target do you think you got out in the early vote? Half? Leora, I am so grateful to you, and will never forget you."

He hangs up, and says to no one in particular, "I'm glad we're doing this."

The calls can only be described as ... tender. It must be said that Reid is not renowned for his tenderness, especially when it comes to his telephone skills. In fact, he is notorious for his brusqueness on the phone. The stories are legion of Reid simply hanging up without warning or goodbye when he has concluded his business, leaving the person on the other end talking to a dial tone. So with each new call, with another incredulous field organizer in the frenzy of the biggest Senate race in the nation, the accretion of kindness and gratitude in this small closed room takes on the air of the extraordinary. Here is this man, a public figure for more than forty years but nonetheless still a figure of sticks and dust in the public imagination, pouring out his heart in what could be his swan song.

Outside this room, dozens of staff go through their last-minute drill, the receptionist's phone rings and rings — Yes, we need Spanish speakers for tomorrow.Your mother, too? Terrific. But there is a sense that the culmination of all their efforts is happening behind this closed door. A lone union man with dirty work boots and a red nose stands bolt erect near the reception desk and looks at the door, keeping vigil. "He's always stood with us," the man says. "I'm gonna stand with him, no matter what."

The thing is: Reid feels bad.

After a lackluster debate performance two weeks ago in which he was widely judged the loser against his extreme and somewhat eccentric opponent, Sharron Angle, he has felt rotten. "I'm mostly mad at myself," he says. "I prepared hard for it, and got some bad advice in the prep, but felt I put us in a hole. With not much time left, it's my job to dig us out of that hole."

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Washington media macher Jim Margolis, the maker of Reid's ads, had been in charge of the debate prep, and he had had Reid memorizing canned responses to fit the one-minute format, the effect of which was stultifying. It was the debate that had all of Washington putting the finishing touches on Harry Reid's obituary. And when they started to say that this was really it for Harry Reid, and that there was really no way he could pull this off, something changed in him.

A few hours ago, up in North Las Vegas, he introduced Michelle Obama to a crowd in a high school gymnasium. She'd come to excite the base and get out the vote. It was a large, boisterous, mostly black crowd, drawn there by the First Lady's star power. But as Reid spoke, something unexpectedhappened. He is a famously dull speaker. He has a thin voice, a hunched manner, and is given to mild, even banal language. But not today. He was going through his speech, which he had printed out on two little cards. The theme was I'm not finished fighting. It wasn't so much the words that were different, a Teddy Roosevelt — ish populism that is at the core of his view of the world, but how Reid spoke them, his authority, his conviction — for once in his life, he was commanding an audience with the passion of his voice.

And as he hit the windup — I'm not finished fighting the big banks, the big insurance and big oil companies that take advantage of us! — the crowd, which had been waiting politely for Mrs. Obama, was surprised to instead find itself swept up in a speech by Harry Reid. A chant — Harry! Harry! Harry! — started low and then built, until it filled and echoed in the big space. Reid tried to continue, but that only aroused the crowd more, and so finally he just stopped, the enveloping voices sweeping him up, and he surrendered with a broad grin.

Harry Reid had stirred an audience that had thoroughly expected to remain unstirred. He had launched a populist salvo back at the Tea Party, which had monopolized such gestures all year. "I think those people have actually been manipulated by big business," he would say later. "Power brokers, chambers of commerce from around the country — they don't want anything the Tea Party wants. They want to maintain control of government, and this was their cynical way to do that. The Tea Party might seem new, but it's not new. Toward the end of World War II, when you had Father Coughlin out there spewing his venom, you had people upset because Truman was the accidental president, just like Obama is the accidental president, and the economy was headed downhill because the war was grinding down, and you had Coughlin with eight million people listening to his poison. So this is not new."

What was new, in the dying light of this campaign, was that Reid had showed something close to rhetorical power, which he typically just does not possess. Some political figures are filled up, replenished, by contact with masses of people. Some seem depleted by such rigors. And then there's Reid, with his feathery voice and his opaque countenance, who most often just seems to want to be alone. In Washington he attends no receptions, socializes hardly at all, and spends every free minute with Landra, his wife of fifty-one years. There was a moment, just before he walked out to face the crowd in that high school gym, when he stood still and by himself, held his speech between his fingertips, and cast his eyes downward in a prayerful pose, as alone in a crowd as a man of the people can be.

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Thecentral mystery of his public existence has been: How did someone like Harry Reid, with his unconventional collection of political skills, ascend to such astonishing heights? And beneath even that: How does anyone of consequence crawl out of a hole in the ground in Searchlight, Nevada?

Several people close to him point to what they admiringly call his "ruthlessness." He is not much for small talk, and he can cut to the quick. Once, a member of Congress paid a visit to lobby Reid on behalf of his father's appointment to a federal appeals court, and as the congressman eased himself into his chair, Reid said bluntly, "Your father's not going to be an appelate judge."

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When he was Tom Daschle's deputy as Democratic leader, Reid never left the Senate floor. He became a master of the institution's rules, to such an extent that he would sometimes keep things in order on the Republican side as well. And during those years, he became a master of the Democratic caucus, too. Senators would constantly come to him with needs, and he would make notes, and he would stuff those notes in his jacket pocket, and by the end of every day, that pocket would be full. He became student and scholar of his ideologically diverse caucus. And he had another remarkable skill that he brought to bear. "People think, Oh, he's such an unassuming man. He's so quiet," says a longtime confidant. "But what he's doing is allowing somebody else to express who they are, and he just figures out a way, sometimes just by looking at somebody — he's the most watchful person in Washington — to gauge how much they need affirmation. He's the master of it. He's figured out, in the Senate, who exactly all of his colleagues are and what kind of rewards system they need, and what really makes them tick. It's an extraordinary craft."

Brooks Kraft/Corbis

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"Hi, Jon," he says, starting another call. "Duke University, you must be smart ... Thirty hours, let's work like a dog, okay? ... Hi, Ebeth, I like your name, but did they mean to call you Elizabeth? I have children with unusual names, too ... Hi, Daniel ... Hi, Lauren ... Hi, Stephanie ... Didn't want the day to go by ... I'll never forget what you've done ... If ever I can help you ..."

Reid stops, looks at his BlackBerry. "Someone sent me a message: 'Thinking of you. Proverbs 3:5 — 6: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not on thine own und-erstanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."' Okay, that's nice."

"Starting tomorrow," Elliott says, "trust is all we've got."

Reid is an intensely faithful Mormon but holds his Bible close to his vest. It is part of what makes him different from the many pharisees in his profession. So does coming from a place like Las Vegas and making his bones in Vegas when he did. Back in the Vegas of the sixties and seventies, Reid was a hotshot lawyer, known often for being the lawyer of last resort. He would take the cases no one else would take, either because they were impossible to win or would pay no money, or both. He would defend people down on their luck, or people he felt were wrongly accused, prostitutes and showgirls. He often took no money or accepted barter. He took more than a hundred cases to trial, a number almost unheard of today, winning most of the time. And then, as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission in the late 1970s, he is widely credited with taking on the mob as it was making its last stand and ridding Las Vegas of organized crime, making the modern city possible.

That he did all this without once setting foot in a casino for fun, or without allowing alcohol to pass his lips, or without being killed (he was under constant threat of death for four years, and a gangster planted a bomb in Landra's car), is a minor miracle. And that he walked through the world that became Las Vegas with a bearing of biblical rectitude while at the same time becoming the most ardent advocate gaming has ever had in the United States Congress just makes you scratch your head in wonder.

He also did it without shedding any of the closest friends that he's made through the years — some of whom have lived on the edge of the law in Vegas. But Reid is an intensely loyal man. When the Midnight Idol himself, Wayne Newton, was making a bid to buy the Aladdin in the late 1970s, rumors (false, as it turned out) began to circulate that the mob was his silent partner in the deal. The entertainer came before Reid's commission and was being interrogated about some of his friends and acquaintances when he said, "... Frankly, if I have to sacrifice my friends, I'm not sure I even want this license."

On hearing this, Reid stood up, said he felt the same way about his own friends, and that he'd do everything he could to make sure Newton got his license, which he did, and even though Newton is a staunch right-wing Republican, he and Reid have been blood brothers ever since.

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To understand Reid and the depth of his loyalties, one must know that the election of 2010 — with the balance of power in the United States Senate at stake and its seismic implications for him personally — is not even close to being the most important election of his life.

That was the election his junior year in high school, when he made treasurer. The effect was profound on a nobody from nowhere: He felt a moment of regard from people for the very first time. His most ardent and enduring friendships were also formed at that high school in Henderson, to which he would hitchhike forty-six miles. His closest friends today are three high school classmates — Don Wilson, Richey Vincent, and Jimmy Joe Balk — and another buddy he met about the same time, through boxing.

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The boxer's name is Gary Bates. He doesn't box anymore, but deals blackjack in the casinos. He's a colorful character, even by Vegas standards. Given a choice between jail or the Marines, he chose the Marines, where he became a serious boxer. Got out and went pro. Fought Norton and Cooney, and was Sonny Liston's sparring partner. He was also a collector for loan sharks and a general heavy. He considers Harry Reid to be his best friend in all the world (when the gangster planted the bomb in Landra's car, Bates offered to kill him; Reid thanked him and declined), and he idolizes Reid's incorruptibility.

"If they ever brought a scandal to the surface about [Harry] having a pecker problem, I'd cut my own throat," Bates says. "I'll give you a razor and you keep it, and if it ever surfaces, just bring it to me, and that's it, I'm gone."

"I've heard other people express that very thing," I tell him.

"They didn't say I'd cut my throat."

"Well, no, they didn't go quite that far."

"I study sin and the devil and Satan, and I'm pretty much aware what's going on. Mormons are funny. They can get a bunch of them together, then all they want to do is be good. And you say, Hmm, how does that work? How does a big set of tits on a billboard not affect you? I'd be pissed off if he's fooling me. I want to be as good as Harry. If someday I ever have to eat those words, it would just break my heart.

"We won't know until we get to the finish line. All my brothers are dead now, and they all know the answer. We always assumed that God just says, You're dead now, the least I can do is let you know who killed Kennedy, how Marilyn Monroe died, and if Harry Reid is getting a little on the side."

That a man whom many regard as the most boring in Washington is the source of such paradox, deep loyalty, and at first glance almost unaccountable political success is what also makes him the most mysterious man in Washington. An upright Mormon who guards Sin City like a hawk and is given to saying things like "I don't like rats. I don't like squealers." A poetry lover who shares verses with close friends but doesn't seem to have an ounce of it in him. A devoted student of policy and power who tossed aside Robert Caro's third book on LBJ, Master of the Senate, because it was just too vulgar to get through.

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Harry Reid seems not of the world — of Vegas, of Washington, of conventional life in general — but somehow he relentlessly prevails in it.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Tonight — election night — Reid is secluded in his suite at the Vdara, as Nevada Democrats begin to gather next door in a ballroom the size of a football field. He sits with a top aide, David Krone, along with his son Josh and Landra, the person he trusts most in the world. During the last few weeks, he and Landra have talked about losing and have quietly prepared each other. No planning beyond that, really, just We'll get through this. A few days before leaving Washington in early October for the stretch run, the television in his condo at the Ritz-Carlton broke, and so as not to anger the gods, he and Landra decided to wait and see what happened before they got it fixed. No time for hubris. Which could almost be the motto for Reid's whole campaign.

When Brandon Hall, his campaign manager, was first approached to work Reid's reelection, he was told that he'd have between $20 and $25 million to spend. Hall recalls thinking to himself, Spending $25 million? On what? Are they going to buy a TV station?

But by the time the polls close tonight, Reid will have spent every penny, deploying the most expensive and ruthlessly efficient campaign in the history of the state. Over the last weekend, sixty thousand doors were knocked on. On voting day, there is a field operation of four thousand people sweeping the state, getting every last Reid voter to the polls. At 6:55, a Reid voter is reached on the phone. "I can't make it. I've got my kids." Polls close at 7:00. "I need you in line by 7:00," a campaign worker tells the man. "Gather up the kids, we'll be right there."

"I told everyone who would listen," Reid says, "that I had the best campaign operation in the history of Nevada, maybe in the history of the country. Not boasting. You never know until the votes are counted, but we'll just have to show 'em."

Now up in Reid's suite, the polls are closing on the East Coast, and the networks are starting to call races. But the main narrative is clear: Harry Reid is dead. As Chuck Todd once again delivers the last rites on MSNBC, the senator walks over to the television and turns it off.

"That's enough of that," he says. The four then sit in a pensive silence and stare at the blank TV for half an hour, the condemned *hoping for a reprieve.

But by early evening, as the polls close in Nevada and the returns begin to build, the numbers look surprisingly good.

The vote from Clark County (Vegas) appears even stronger for him than most expected. And even Sharron Angle's home county, Washoe (Reno), is very competitive.

The TV comes back on. And it's not long before Reid is on the phone again, but this time people are calling him. Joe Biden calls to say, "Looks like you've got it, Harry!" And then the president calls, too, to say, "Congratulations, friend!" But Reid's not so sure.

He's been through this too many times before to get carried away. They don't call him Landslide Harry for nothing. He isn't going to believe that he's won until Rebecca Lambe tells him so. Lambe is Reid's top strategist, the mastermind who designed this expensive plan. She's all business. "Until I hear from Rebecca, I'm not the winner," Reid says.

Even after Fox calls it for him, he still won't let himself fully believe it. The rural counties could still kill him. And what's happening in Reno? His jacket's off and his shirt's untucked and he's not going anywhere until it's certain.

Just then, Lambe calls David Krone's line. "Get him dressed," she says. He's taken Washoe by 5 percentage points. It's over. In fact, the election is not even close.

Soon Reid is getting ready to go next door, where he has one last speech to make in this campaign. The staff is still fielding a flood of calls, but then Mayor Cashell from up in Reno is on the line. Guy's a Republican, but he endorsed Reid because he said that Angle had "wild ideas."

"I want that phone!" Reid says, reaching for it. "Is that my wild man? We did it! They didn't know what hit 'em, did they?"

He seems taller, and the broad smile, which hasn't had much practice, is back. His eyes are clear, and the bags have disappeared in the warm hotel light. He wears the look of a man with something to prove.

A few days later, as he's preparing to return to Washington, he gets on the phone again, from Searchlight. "History will judge that the things this Congress did were the right things to do," he tells me. "I totally reject this notion that the country voted against the policies we have worked so hard on. Of course, it's hard to tell a man who's out of work and under water all the great things you're doing for him when he doesn't feel it yet. But we did a terrible job of communicating the importance of these things to the country. We have to take it to these people who so distort the truth. It starts now."

I remind him of the comment by the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, that his own number-one priority now is to make Obama a one-term president. "It's a very foolish thing he said," Reid replies, not sounding the least bit tired. "We're gonna have to make him eat those words."